Muse

We got Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 and it's just another one of these vampire movies I guess and it's romantic and it's full of these sort of situations which turns out to be that's very interesting, very scary at times but also a lot of romance and really well made. So I recommend it. Good soundtrack. Good soundtrack. If you're a film buff, you notice things like that. You can tell that they shot a lot of this stuff in the woods and in certain locations that really worked. I loved it. I thought it was great. Would it be a great movie to see with friends? I'm giving it... Or by yourself. Great. TBTL!

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm sticking out my G-at for the Rizzler.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm sticking out my G-at for the Rizzler. Can't you say anything in a normal way?

The answer, sadly, is not yes.

Laughter, a sure sign of a good time. I gotta be honest with you, sir. The kind of work I do, I don't think it's as interesting as you think it is. It's not like in the movies. I mean, the things that I work with, I don't think that they would be interesting to an audience. I should have prepared, but I just watched TV.

I was up until 4 a.m. putting together a special list for today's show. I kept adding things to it, taking things off of it, arranging it, rearranging it, adding more things, taking more things off. And the thing is, not only do I still think it's imperfect, I don't even know if we're going to have time to get to it today.

That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

Hey, everybody. My name is Andrew Walsh, and you are listening to a brand new Tuesday installment of TBTL. This is the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I could really use a win here. I think you're really going to enjoy the theme, the premise, the game of today's show, if you will. And I think you're going to enjoy our special guest who inspired it even more. He is, I think a lot of you guys know this guy. He's a dear old friend of mine now. Our friendship was forged in the fires of nighttime commercial radio here in Seattle. I was a talk show host who didn't know what I was doing. He was a talk show producer, saddled with a talk show host who didn't know what he was doing. Now he's left radio, and he's living the good life down there in Dallas, Texas.

I feel like I have the power of a thousand cowboys running through my veins right now.

His name is Nick Jarin, and he joins us now from Dallas. How you doing, Nick? Oh, I'm doing wonderful. Do you have the power of a thousand cowboys running through your veins right now?

I feel it. I feel it. You know, as that was playing, my whole body tensed and I could feel the power coursing through me.

That's from What We Do in the Shadows. Are you a fan of What We Do in the Shadows? I could see you getting into that.

I am. I haven't watched the entire TV show because it's one of those really specific types of humor that if I watch too many in a row, it all starts to blend together. So usually when I get back into it, I'll probably watch like five of them and then get back out and then come back later and watch like five of them.

And it does have a narrative. an overarching narrative that is lighter, I feel like, at the beginning of the series. So you can sort of, it starts off as the show that you can sort of dip in and dip out of. If you missed episodes three through five, you're still pretty good to go on episode six, you know. But as the series goes on, I think it becomes more and more dependent on the overarching narrative, which that always kind of gets me out. Because I might be on my on what I like to call my boop boop, like, you know, my phone or my iPad, my generic iPad playing Marvel Snap or whatever and sort of half paying attention. But if I'm missing broad plot points, that sort of puts then I'm like, oh, I got to put everything down and watch this show. So therefore, I'm not going to watch it right now. And I might not watch it ever.

Yeah, I think when they introduced the Vampire Council. Yes. like season two is when i was like oof i don't know how long i'm going to stick with this but

i'll watch a few more yeah and it's still great by the way i did get back into it um a couple of weeks ago and i watched like kind of a a chunk of them that i hadn't seen before so there's not a criticism of the show it's just like one of those shows that's like so good that i can't half-ass it and so therefore i really want to sit down and watch you know what you know this goes back to our friendship like over 10 years now is um oh you're gonna be so disappointed

pointed at me nick what is that why are you smiling what is the uh what's the donald glover tv show that was like oh atlanta you never finished i never finished atlanta because it was too good it was i still haven't gotten to the weird episode where he's in white face for some reason i still don't know what that meme means it's from 10 years ago i keep on thinking i haven't seen the new

season yet man that that has one of the best finale episodes of any show i think also because they knew they were the last two seasons they knew they were wrapping it up and they knew they were wrapping up for the last two seasons so the third season super experimental like the principal cast is barely in some of those episodes fourth season they bring you back to atlanta the actual city and the setting that you're used to and it's incredible it it ties a bow on everything that you would want it too really because it doesn't and it leaves enough stuff open that you're like this is true

to the story it seems like a complicated bow for sure i do remember seeing one episode where there's a black justin bieber do i have that right yeah yeah i think i think i saw that episode too that's not what we're here to talk about it's close though actually um so i mentioned this list at the top of the show and i and all of that was true by the way i stayed up so late last night I went to the ball game, and then we got back home, I don't know, like 10, 30, 11. I'm like, oh, good. I'll go to bed early tonight. I'm just going to do one thing, and I sat down behind my computer. Next thing I know, it's 4 in the morning. I'm tinkering around with this list in preparation of today's show, and I'm digitizing old ads that I found in a VHS tape. This is what I get up to. If I push through to a certain moment, I'm up all night doing stuff like that. So anyway, the premise of today's show is based on a conversation that you and I had a few weeks ago when you were up here in Seattle visiting. You are heavily into film right now. I think you've always been, but it seems to have sort of coalesced. You're on something that I had heard about, this app called Letterboxd, but I'd never known anybody who had gotten so into it before. What's Letterboxd, for those who don't know?

letterboxd is basically a social media app where you can rate review movies um you can look at your friends's ratings and reviews as well you can make lists you can uh keep track of your watch list for movies that you want to watch in the future and when you log them it'll automatically take them off of the watch list so it makes like any kind of agenda you have around seriously or even not that seriously watching movies and getting into film um really easy to do i follow a few reviewers on there that i like and then a few people who i actually know as well so it's always interesting to click on a movie and then you can see immediately what your friends and the people you follow thought of it and then also it'll show you the ratings for everybody on letterboxd as well the letterboxd average is always an interesting one to look at but also So it'll break it down by – so from half star to five stars and all of the halves in between, you can rate movies. So you can see the mode and the distribution of things as well. So if you see something that's been review bombed, for example, it might have an average of three, but it's all like fives and halves. Pretty polarizing the movie sounds like an interesting one that I want to see.

So wait, I sort of lost you there a little bit with the numbers, and I'm trying to think if it's good radio to dig back into that. but are you saying that the system sort of has historically yes so let's slow everything down and explain it to me um but are you saying that the system sort of has a built-in way of correcting for somebody who's going to review bomb it with an agenda

not necessarily correcting for it but giving you enough information that you can see that something was reviewed i see they don't just give you one number like this one's a 3.5 but they'll show you what everybody has rated it. Like, is 3.5 the most popular, or was there a bunch of fives on there that's being pulled down by people who also hated it?

Ah, yeah, no, that actually really is good. Actually, that system should be used for more user review stuff. That's how we should elect president. What? I asked you yesterday via text, you have anything that you want to talk about on the show tomorrow? And then, I don't know, it maybe took you, a minute or two to reply. And then I was like, Oh, maybe he'll get to it later. And then I remembered, Oh, no, no, no. He's sending one of those patented Nick jar and text messages. You replied, do you text via your computer? You send the longest text messages of anybody I know. And I consider you to be a pretty young person. And I don't know, is that what the young people are doing? Or do you have an old soul? You sent me a book via text of things you want to talk about on today's show including politics which i scratched oh i appreciate that um

I would not say that it's normal.

Because I don't like your conservative politics.

Yeah, my conservative politics. It's not normal. I text way longer than anybody I know. And so part of the genesis of this is that you're able to control the text size on your – I have an iPhone. So I turn mine to the lowest setting. So I can fit a lot of text on the screen at one time. And I can be kind of verbose as a person anyway. So sometimes I've got some thoughts I've got to get out. Hey, you know what? those thumbs start moving they move pretty fast no i have i really appreciate it i was telling

vives on the bus yesterday on the way back from the ball game i'm like so i asked nick if he had any thoughts this is what he said and i just showed her the block of text he's like yep sounds about right but i appreciate it that is why you're here um and so here's the deal uh talking about letterboxd the reason i bring it up is because you have been very into into film specifically recently and physical media which maybe we'll talk about later getting kind of off the streamers and actually kind of going back to kind of Bluetooth and appreciating that Bluetooth sorry I always do that Blu-ray but what I liked about Letterboxd I'd heard about it before but I'm like I don't know if I really have a use for that I'm not invested enough to like kind of write reviews but what I loved was your very specific lists that you had and you had one that really intrigued me which I believe was titled and this is a list that you made on your profile called movies to watch on mute at a bar and this was up my alley i looked at your your list maybe i don't know how many are down there 20 25 or something uh when i saw you a couple of weeks ago like i have a um ongoing spotify music playlist that i started probably five years ago now and i think it's called if i were teddy and it was during the time when i was going to this bar teddies all the time and they played a certain kind of music there all the time and so i made that's sort of my my background jukebox list so that if i'm in a bar and i can't think of what to put on the jukebox i just have this long list of things that are good for chilling in a bar and this is basically the same thing because i love i fantasize about like if i owned a bar what would i put on the television obviously bowling i think i would put on a lot of like 1980s bowling tournaments i think that's great bar just sort of visual spackle um when like genevieve has people over she had a party recently i put on um you can just go on youtube and put on like 1985 raw mall footage i know when i said raw you thought i was going somewhere else it was not that kind of a party um no and there's one there's literally right now listeners if you just go to google and Type in 1984 inside a McDonald's, I think. There's like a 15-minute – like I don't know if it was B-roll for something that somebody was making. And it's just like so 1984 and so McDonald's. And it's just like just people having a mundane time smoking and eating burgers at McDonald's.

I enjoy that so much. One of my favorites – so I have two favorite social media accounts, one of them being Letterboxd. Letterboxd and the other one being TikTok. And one of my favorite TikTok follows right now is called Mallkitecture. It's this person who just goes and takes video inside these malls of today. Most of them are empty. All of them are dying. And it's just fascinating to look at these spaces that used to be so thriving, like in those 80s videos, but now they're either empty or in the mall where the mall that's closest to where my parents live in Washington now has a church in it and a grocery store I was flabbergasted I was like I didn't know you could do either of those

things in a mall some of the the the most chilling moments of my life in the past 10 years have been when I've accidentally walked into a mall like they are getting weird they are getting really this like you'll go in and there'll be one place that used to be like a radio shack or a KB toys or a B Dalton whatever and it's just gutted and you can just see the the like cement where they pulled up the the carpet right and there's somebody selling like two boxes of tennis shoes or something and for some reason there's like two guys whose wrists are tied together and they're having a knife fight by the fountain you're just like what has happened people are chanting world star for some reason what has happened to the tina tarner is there i believe somebody's got a giant hammer that they're swinging around those are football pads so anyway i am obsessed with your list of good movies to have on as sort of like visual what I'll call visual spackle in a bar muted um also I want to know as we go through your list and then I created my own list too that if we have time I'd love your reaction to and I'd also like to know

if there's a difference whether or not you would put on um subtitles or not like do some of these movies require subtitles are we assuming no subtitles actually you can answer that one right

now this is a great question i have very strong feelings about this okay it needs to be a movie that makes enough sense on mute yes but also is confusing a bit on mute that you're pulled in by the confusion but you can also kind of understand what's going on one of the movies that didn't make the cut for me was Michael Bay's Transformers which when you watch it you will be utterly confused but also riveted by the confusion of it and subtitles would just ruin the entire thing

you don't need to see the dialogue for Transformers okay good so the point of this of these lists are movies to watch on mute without subtitles I think that's good that's how I would prefer to do it as well in fact you make a good point I have no desire to see that Transformers movie I do think I saw in the theater with my friend beverly she was a big transformers nerd growing up and for some reason like i knocked off work early that day and i remember going to see the transformers movie and it was just so it was really bad we're talking about the very first one right like 20 years yeah yeah it was so bad but such a fun afternoon there's nothing like going with your friend to the movies in the middle of a weekday like just so great for michael bay oh yes so anyway yeah Some of these movies like almost work better on mute at a bar than actually going and trying to pay attention to them. Before we get to all of that, though, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, you and I met and worked together at Cairo Radio. I actually hosted a show in the evening in the in the slot of the old TBTL slot years later. Who let you do that? They called it the Andrew Walsh show. I didn't like the sound of that. Neither did the listeners. You were the producer. And one of the things we did every night was we would start with you telling me the things we needed to do successfully in order to have a good show that night. We called him Nick Jarns, Keys to the Show. Now, it's Nick Jarns, Keys to the Show. Keys to the Show. Until I dug this out of the crate yesterday, I forgot that we padded this out with Round Ball Rock.

I totally forgot, too. I remember how pumped I used to get hearing that voice. Yeah. Forgot that we used Round Ball Rock, which, by the way, the NBA is coming back to NBC. Oh. And NBC was using Round Ball Rock all through the Olympics as well.

I had heard, you know, I kept seeing, like, news about it or that maybe he was, like, cutting a new version of it or maybe – I don't know if I saw that correctly or not.

Yeah, you're talking about John Tesh cutting a – Tesh, yeah.

Sorry, I was blanking on his name. Thanks for –

An updated version.

Oh, just like old times. Thanks for fixing that for me. so yeah um what are your keys to today's show to make this a successful endeavor

keys to the show i got three two for me one for us first one i'm gonna try to keep the references to me moving to texas to three maximum okay and so far a lot for me i'm gonna try to try to keep

it under three well what are we we're like 20 minutes in and we haven't had one reference from

you yet so you're doing well thank you thank you very much number two without trying too hard I'm going to try to be the inspiration for the episode title today. Hopefully it was something I say and not, you know, some war crime that I've committed on the show.

I don't want, you know what? I don't want to riff on that. I was going to, but I don't want to. That feels dangerous. War crime's not good for you? That feels dangerous to me. I was trying to think of a clever TVTL style show title that involves war crimes. Just Gaddafi in me.

Number three, just have fun out there.

Just say, you know what, let's just have some fun out there.

Let's just have some fun out there.

There it was, Nick Jarns, keys to the show. All right, Nick, let's talk about your list. Like I mentioned, on the Letterboxd app, you have probably, what do you have, like 25 or 30 or something of these movies? But I've asked you to kind of narrow it down to about 10, if possible. And I didn't specify, are you going to do these in order? That's where I really struggled last night I was trying to do it in order Counting down to a number one And that's why I was up so late

Here's the thing I'm glad you gave me a deadline Because I was tinkering this with the order of it So much that I was like I have to stop I have to stop at the order And just say that there's no particular order But there are kind of Three archetypes Of the type of film That I think is on the list Which is why I think the order will matter less than the overall feeling that you'll get.

Okay, I like that.

All right. I'd like to begin with just an overall scene setting, I think. So I think Teddy's is a great example for the type of bar we're shooting for, a type of bar where you can hang out for a while.

You can get a shot in a beer for a decent price. You're not going there for a fine cocktail. You might do a one-in-one, a tequila soda on the line, a whiskey highball.

But not necessarily a dive bar. Some people call a place like Teddy's a dive bar. I just consider it kind of a bar. It's a neighborhood bar. It's more of a neighborhood bar, exactly. It's comfortable. It's not highfalutin.

Yeah, there's a couple near me in Dallas. Cosmos, great place that always has movies on in the background. Lakewood Landing. another one that like if you're not from the city you might call it a dive but it's really

just a neighborhood spot does this count as one of your dallas references i'm just curious

oh yeah it probably does i got two more it's good it's good i got two more um but it's a place where you're meant to be comfortable and that you can hang out and really spend some time it's got bartenders so you don't mind chatting with um they're not necessarily the star of the show they're not the reason why you go there but you go there and you know like hey you know mickey's working tonight i know he's gonna have some kind of story about what i got on today whatever um so that's that's the bar we're shooting for this isn't yeah you know hookah lounge club whatever we're going for neighborhood bar you look up while you're sipping your your rainier and you're like oh this movie's on and you get sucked in a little bit just because this

isn't an ace hotel rooftop bar in los angeles yeah yeah no kimptons here no kim yes kimptons

need not apply okay all right so number uh should we go should we number them i well you said no

particular order but it's so tempting isn't it okay i know no particular you know should i get the drum roll i feel like i had a drum roll in here just yesterday i had a drum roll ready to go and then I pulled it out of my audio list. I'm like, what am I going to do? When Luke's not here, I don't need a drum roll for anything, but I actually feel like it would actually really help us here. So here, let me find, do we want a drum roll with a cymbal crash? Yeah. Okay, let's do that. How do we do this? I'm going to drum roll it, and then you give us your number 10.

The Goonies. The Goonies. The Goonies.

Is that racist? I'm actually trying to remember. I sort of feel like... Because of data? I can't remember that well. I just remember Genevieve or somebody I know re-watched The Goonies in their adulthood in the past, I'm going to say 10 years. And they were like, oh, wow. That's not all the scenes in that movie are super comfortable to watch in a modern day.

Yeah. Well, the good news is we won't have to listen to Kiki Kwan doing that accent, which would be – it's even more exaggerated than his normal accent.

Oh, because it's on mute.

Yeah, because it's on mute.

Yes.

It's also not great to people with, like, disabilities, both physical and mental.

Oh, okay.

I don't remember that. Man, what's that character's name? You know? But these are all conversations that will come up at the bar.

Are you talking about the Pudgy Kid or is there somebody else who has some disability?

No, it's the son of the Forellis, the crime family that they lock him in the dungeon, basically.

Oh, I almost said Groot, not Groot. But yeah, yeah, yeah. He likes baby Ruth, though, right? Is it Chunk? No, Chunk's the kid. Chunk's the kid. Either way, point is a lot of red flags. It's not great. But here's the thing.

We're already talking about it. We're already talking about it. And if it were on at the bar, we'd be like, you know what? You know what didn't age great, actually? 1985's The Goonies.

Well, it's also got enough of, like, quotable lines, too, that when you're looking at it, you're like, oh, this is the scene where, you know, he's giving the speech about, like, down here, it's our time, down here. You go up Troy's bucket, blah, blah, blah, and that kind of stuff. Like, there's enough scenes in that movie that are so memorable when they find One-Eyed Willie's ship, things like that. i think that when you're watching it there's that right blend of nostalgia for people of a certain age also growth for hopefully those same people of that same age we're like you know what i don't appreciate this part of the movie anymore and gets the conversation going it's visually interesting enough that you can just kind of zone out and watch it for a while because of what they're doing steven spielberg directed obviously um i think the goonies the goonies is on the list you know

you say obviously i did forget that um i would have remembered that he was attached to it like a producer or something i don't think i remember that he actually directed the goonies i didn't like i mean i think i watched the goonies in a certain way like the goonies is more my generation than yours right like is that would have been like prime vhs time for me i think i think so i encountered it almost exclusively as like a home yeah viewing yeah yeah and so i probably saw it when it was new on vhs in the 80s Thank you.

or what have you, but it wasn't like kind of a staple of growing up. So you have a better grasp on that than I do. But I will tell you what, if your next one is Birth of a Nation, I know what you're doing here.

It's just a conversation starter. We can see if we've grown since then. All right. Are you ready for me to tee you up for your next one? Yeah, let's do it.

all right the tony jaw vehicle the protector the protector the protector and it's okay that you don't know this one because so tony jaw this thai um muay thai boxing uh tv and i'm not tv like film legend basically had just this string of action movies that came out in like the early 2000s to like his his last ones were probably around like the early 2010s and so you got like ombak ombak the warrior um i think he did three of those and there's a few other ones where sometimes he's rescuing somebody who was kidnapped you know very basic like reviving the 1980s type plots from action movies and then just doing those but with incredible action and with muay thai as the style of fighting instead of what um you know jean-claude van damme and then we're doing in the in the 80s in this one he protects elephants in particular and there is one scene that is so jaw-dropping in the way that it's executed where it's it's a one-shot up a staircase where he is fighting up the entire thing that if you're anywhere near that scene when you sit down at the bar you're like oh we got to lock in because this is about to happen in this movie

i don't know it makes the entire thing worth it i don't like i'm not i i actually find like kind of that kind of action and fighting like i'm actually turned off by it like i don't like seeing i don't like i don't i don't like it i don't know why like i don't find in fact it makes me um you you said that there's sort of i think did you say before that there's sort of four broad categories that you're going for here and is yeah i have another one that's pretty similar okay so is one of them that that sort of like fighting action movie like hand-to-hand did i go ahead and add it right now maybe you'll like that one more maybe i'm listen this is your list i'm not being critical of your list i'm just saying that like if i were in a bar i i think i don't know that that would be something that would draw me in i agree with that i think that

the protector is one of those if you know you know movies uh-huh and that a lot of people even myself when i was trying to figure out what movie that that one shot action scene was in i was like that had to have been an ombak right like that's the that's the biggest one he did it had to have been in that one it's not it's in the protector really there's also a scene where he learns from the way that you take down an elephant if there's something wrong with them by cutting the tendons and he's fighting a guy who's like three times his size tony jaw is only like he's got to be like five four he's pretty small um and he ends up cutting all the guy's tendons and as you're watching it and you're realizing in real time with tony jaw's character what's going on you're like wow he really is the protector he's got elephant blood running through his veins look at him go

so we got one racist movie one movie where they torture elephants you're doing great

i mean really just stand up job the bar's up for everybody

yeah wait what kind of bar is this again there's a there's a sign in the bathroom that says the

south will rise again right next to the one that says please don't do coke in the bathroom

right exactly okay so i can i sort of guess as you as you give these um what the contours of the categories are so we have sort of punch them up action movies but then is is a goonies gonna fit into a bucket of sort of like um sort of just like kind of good time adventure movies

or nostalgic adventure movies yes but i think that i think the goonies might have been the only one from that category that i kept in there okay but there are a couple others in there okay well like um never mind i can't remember the one with the with the corys in it they find a dead

body stand by me yeah stand by me look at me i don't even know if i've ever i don't know if i've seen stand by me but i've seen the very very dark very weird early 90s version of it how weird well it's got crispin glover in it let's start with that it's gonna be weird um i think it's called is it down by the river or the riverside does this ring a bell to you at all this is the stand by me remake it is it is it is a also about a body found by the river and a bunch of teens um i'm trying to type and talk at the same time this is not going to be good um but it's like it's a it's a much it's almost like

Like, if you took Stand By Me and just sprinkled a little bit of gummo in there, a little Harmony Corrine, you know what I'm talking about? Let's see here. River's Edge, it's called. So if you're into that, yeah. You were so close. What did I say? Down by the river? Down by the river? Down by the river. Down by the river. Yeah, check out The River's Edge if you're into that vibe. But it is a type of movie that I believe will make you feel pretty uncomfortable. if you didn't get that from the Harmony Corrine meets Stand By Me.

Yeah, Sandlot was another one that I had in that category, which obviously much more lighthearted than Stand By Me. Slightly. Another one that you either watched as a kid or watched when you were younger because you were like, there's kids in this kind of thing.

Yeah, you know, I, and you do know this, Nick, and probably a lot of listeners do as well, like I grew up not being into sports really at all. And then as an adult, not until my 30s, I started watching baseball and I got really into baseball. I'm, you know, I have this sort of a little bit of envy of people who've watched baseball their whole life and grew up with it and have all the sort of cultural markers of that. And one of that, especially people of my generation, is the Sandlot and their affection for it. And I knew it wasn't made for me as a 40 something year old man, but I had to try it at some point. And I will tell you, this does not hold up if you're watching it for the first time. I mean, without without the nostalgia factor, like I was very surprised to start off with a real I only made it like probably 10 minutes in and it starts off with a really stilted sort of voiceover. I didn't I wasn't ready for that voiceover.

So, again, I'm not trying back in an unexpected parts, too, where you're like, oh, man, he said and then the voiceover would be like, yeah, I was pretty sad.

And by the way, people love that movie. I'm not trying to poop on the fact that people still love it if you're somebody who loves that movie I'm saying I'm a little bit envious of you because it means that you grew up with it and it means something to you but I sort of just missed that boat and by the time I tried to hop on it it was already too far away so okay here's what I'm going to do I'm going to get this drum roll going so I know we said not in order but you know what we're doing this in some kind of an order this will be your if we're counting down from 10 this will be number 8

i think we got to go with lord of the rings the two towers ah the lord of the ring and i know i know you're not going to like this one but here's the thing helms deep the last like almost 45 minutes of that movie is one of the greatest action sequences ever put to film it's visually striking it's the kind of thing that you put on and it makes you feel kind of dumb for watching house of the dragon because of how much better it looks doing the same thing i know intellectually

that that is a great pick genevieve and i were talking about your list yesterday on the bus and um she like you knows that i'm not way into those movies and i kind of explained it to her that like and again now i just feel like i'm pooping all over your list which is not supposed to be the point here but no i i knew you weren't gonna like it's just but i think not i but i am I'm definitely the outlier on that. I think most people love them. And also what, I mean, there's, if you take all three of them or six, if you count the Hobbit or whatever, however you're doing it, um, like you put it on mute, like you could, you could entertain your bar by just having that in the background for days, basically, you know? And so I understand why in a certain way it's perfect for that, but because I'm not super into the movies when they're unmuted, to me, it'll always look the same. That's what I said to V. It's like, I'll just look up and I'll be like, I don't know. They're still in the woods. There's still like, I don't know. There's still, I don't know, being scared by ringwraiths. I don't know. It just sort of all blends together for me.

That's all just the first movie. You're just describing the first movie. The second one, they're out of the woods. They're in rolling hills mostly. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. What happens in the two towers? I think just like two of the characters are still in the woods. There's talking trees in the second one. So maybe that's what you don't like. Ents. Yeah. The Ents are in the second one. I did read the books.

the ends when i read the books um i got through all i think i i was pretty young i got i got the lord of the ring series the books as an easter gift in the early 90s and it seemed like a very interesting easter gift for me um and i remember getting through it took me forever and then i think i finally gave up about halfway through return of the king is that the third one i think it just got I think it got I think I started to feel like it just bogged down for me but I'm proud

that I made it that far I originally read those when I was 12 and I gotta be honest I I had to skip half of the council of Elrond that happens at the the end of fellowship because at some points in that chapter they're just listing like names and how

people are related to each other yeah like the bible i can't do this anymore like i don't even know who who i barely even know who gimli son of gloin is right now why would i need to know

who gloin is also the son of and nick think about this that's the accessible stuff that's not this that's not like the hidden scrolls of elder or whatever you know what i mean like that's the

stuff that made the cut i love it okay so i uh again i um that probably wouldn't be my pick but i totally totally get it um i'm gonna give you a drum roll i think this would be number seven

on your list as we count down i'm gonna stick in this same genre and go with a movie that i think was incredibly underrated when it came out and didn't get nearly enough attention dungeons and

dragons honor among thieves really so i know nothing about this what's it like what's the

production value the production value is actually pretty good um so it was written by john francis daily who's done a bunch of stuff if you look at his imdb you'll realize how many things he's had a hand in that you enjoyed at some point starring chris pine oh as kind of a kind of a roguish bard who steals things but maybe for the right reasons maybe not kind of thing you're not sure if you should be rooting for him or not until he kind of reveals his heart over the uh the length

of the quest for the movie is this a much younger chris pine is this like pre star trek no this is

like two years ago oh really oh okay yeah i actually think that part of the problem it didn't get more buzz is because it came out like right as like theaters were reopening oh sure um and it made a decent amount of money but like not enough that people were like okay screw covet i got to get back to the theater to watch this dungeons and dragons movie like people weren't falling over themselves to see this one but i find it incredibly enjoyable and it's one of those ones where like you're gonna recognize enough of the cast like hugh grant is in it what um michelle rodriguez uh the guy from season one of bridgerton who i can't remember right now rege jean page um it's one of those movies where you look up and you're like wait i know that person i know that person and i know that guy that's good for a bar that's good for a bar this that

is exactly i can hear the conversation i can hear the conversation as it ripples down the bar and then like one person turns to their friend like wait what is this and then there's some know-it-all like two stools down who's kind of like oh you know i you know like snapping his fingers and pointing at the tv and saying it's probably you know me yeah exactly and then giving everybody

the background on that this is 2022's dungeons and dragons honor among themes during christine

didn't do so well as the theaters climbed out of covet um how much kind of lore or backstory of the um of the uh world did you go into it with and how much is dependent on that

great question this is one of the perfect introductory dnd projects because you need to know nothing okay nothing at all when you walk in and i'm someone who you know i have my own uh nerdy pieces of lore that i get into i really didn't get deep into dungeons and dragons until baldur's gate 3 came out last year so this movie actually came out before that that's when i walked in i was like game right that is a video game yeah um like it won game of the year at every place that matters last year um i'd heard of it yeah so when i went in to watch honor among thieves i was like i hope this isn't confusing for me i went by myself to be honest because i i didn't feel confident recommending it to anybody when i first saw it um but i got my uh my special edition honor among thieves mountain dew flavor i went in there what was the flavor it was a um man was it actually i think it might have been mellow yellow funny enough oh i love that um but it tasted like uh it tasted like straight like sour candies as i was drinking i was like oh I can't have another one of these but you know I respect the hustle AMC theaters. You know what I'm always

tempted by that I've never had is and I'm looking it up now they probably don't have it anymore I think of it as new but it's probably again 10 years ago but there was a special Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew as my friend Jessica calls it at KFC that was a golden color and I'm looking for oh I guess it's called Sweet Lightning have you ever tried Mountain Dew

sweet lightning only served at kfc i have not tried that although i am not averse to going to a fast food establishment exclusively for some like weird flavor of a thing yeah what is it supposed to taste and we can get right back into uh the dnd thing but what is it supposed to no

we're done with the dnd thing no just joking um let's see here it says um i'm looking at Oh, God, foodandwine.com. I feel like...

mr food and wine is rolling over in his grave kfc will serve an exclusive mountain dew flavor that's the quote perfect pairing for original recipe chicken this was published in 2019 so uh more recent than i thought only five years ago um it's definitely like i said a golden color which seems just like so thirst quenching to me i'm looking to see what it's supposed to uh here it is the result is a golden hued soda with a punch of peach and a touch of honey flavors okay um so back to dungeons and dragons have you played dungeons and dragons

no i've never played the actual uh tabletop game actually when balder's gate three came out that kind of scratched the itch of like there's two the two first things you learn about dnd is one how to play and then two how hard it is to get everybody together to play again yeah right i believe that i believe that so the video game was was huge and uh great for the people like me who have never been able to get a party together at all for for dungeons and dragons but yeah you don't need to know anything about the lore you can walk in like not necessarily turn your brain off but they're going to explain everything that needs to be explained and then i re-watched it recently and it makes even more sense now that i do know more of the lore and there's a couple more things in there that you can laugh at because you're like oh this mechanic that they're doing in the movie works as action on the movie but that also works in terms of how combat works in dungeons

and dragons all right well let's uh really cool let's cue up your next one here are we on number six i believe let's get you the drum roll

all right we're going to step into a different genre and this one is the one that i'm calling neon fantasy we're gonna go first with blade runner 2049 oh

that i you know i will tell you that so far is the first one that is on both of our lists really yes i put the original blade runner on my list and then i thought about it and while you know desert island scenario which is just such a weird scenario like why is somebody say you're stuck on this desert island you can have one of the Blade Runners like I mean how did I get there you know like what decisions have I made um but I you know I'm probably taking the original flavor but if for the scenario that we've set up I want things that are the most eye candy-y and the modern production of what they were able to do with 2049 and seeing a lot of the visions of the original film come to more like digital life I just feel like it's my list is very eye candy ish and I and I feel like 2049 accomplishes that yeah 100% it's easily

the best looking Denis Villeneuve movie because I also have Dune on my longest yeah yeah but when I was looking at both of them I was like it's got to be 2049 because it's such a stunning movie just to look at um I think were you the one who told me about this website that's um every frame of a movie you can go there and click on one of the movies it'll show you a random frame of it no and i believe 2049 is one of the ones on there and it'll just show you a random frame of it and literally the whole movie looks gorgeous i see so it's kind of randomly like almost randomly

generates it but every single shot looks like something that you would hang on your wall yeah exactly you're like print that out print that out right now i totally i can totally believe that

the use of color and shadow it's it's incredible and it's one of those ones that kind of like what we were already doing it also makes you bring up the original which there's a couple other sequels on here as well on my list that make you do the same thing where you're like oh this is the second one i definitely love the first one but was this one better or maybe underrated in some way that people don't give it enough credit for and i think that 2049 is one of those because it didn't do great at the box office um and i think it only ended up winning like maybe like one oscar for like visual effects if i'm remembering correctly but it's one of those movies it's aged incredibly even since then and it's only been out for i think less than a decade i have a question for you

speaking of like sequels and then having to question whether a sequel is is almost better than what came before it do you is there a chance that furiosa is better than fury road

i wish i could participate in this one but i haven't seen furious okay i thought you were

gonna say but i'm not touching that one you want to talk about goonies and birth of a nation i'm here for that but i'm not delving into these treacherous waters no i went to see here's the deal i thought i remembered fury road better than i did because i in my memory we went to see it in like oh like the perfect place to see something like that it was brand

new I was living in LA we went to the um god damn it the huge dome theater that's down there there's one here and see a cinerama but we saw it like the original cinerama I think just like huge huge screen went like like on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a couple of friends and just like let that fury road just wash over us but that's like all I remembered about the movie was just like feeling like the whole thing has no plot it's just one big car chase and that I can't believe again how long ago that was. And then we saw Furiosa recently with some of the same folks here in Seattle and really, really enjoyed it. And then I came home and I rewatched Fury Road for the first time in 10 years. And I was like, there's a lot more plot of Fury Road than I remembered. And it's a little bit hokey at times. It's a little bit hokier than I remembered. And I felt like Furiosa was better, But I also feel like this could definitely be recency bias. You know, I like I like whatever the last one I saw in the theater was.

That's interesting, because I think that one of the things that really works about Fury Road is that it it barely goes deeper than cliche. There's damsels in distress. One of the damsels is an inversion who's Furiosa herself. There's chase scenes. The bad guys clearly look like bad guys. it's stylishly done it's visually stunning you can think about it more if you want to and think about the wasteland and the economies of it and things like that and how important joe is so much smarter than everybody else and able to to be the one in charge or you could not and just be like

man that was crazy fire guitar yeah i actually think the furiosa gets more into those things that you just raised about like the economies and maybe you know that from reading about it But I am surprised that you haven't seen it, because it seems like right up your alley.

I meant to. That happened to be just a busy time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't able to do it.

All right, sounds good. So how did we get there? What was your last one again?

My last one was Blade Runner 2024.

Blade Runner 2024. OK, and we're both on the same page with that one. I am going to give you another drum roll here.

on that same token of the uh the neon fantasy sequel tron legacy oh i've never seen any trons but it seems exactly like what i would love to see at a bar yeah tron legacy is incredible and what sucks about like the mute list is that one of the great things about the movie is that daft punk did the soundtrack so the soundtrack's incredible oh wow daft punk is actually in one of the scenes in like a club scene and they're the djs at the club but it's one of those movies where there's enough actors that you'll recognize um like a michael sheen is kind of a that guy for a lot of people who are like oh hey i know him from the uh fill in a lot of different movies actually um olivia wilde um and then obviously the uh jeff bridges is the dad and he's in it as

well oh is this the movie where they is this the movie where they had to kind of reshoot him as did they use some technology to make him seem young at the very beginning of this they did

and then they push it even further because the plot of this one is so in the first one jeff bridges's character creates tron uh which is both a video game and like a self-sustaining bio-digital world unto itself. In the second one, he's stuck in there and he's actually being held prisoner by the digital copy of himself within Tron, who is a CGI character of like a de-aged Jeff Bridges.

Okay.

But, good conversation to have at the bar. I don't like it when they do that, man.

I don't like it when they do that.

That's what on movies people complain about. I don't like it when they de-age people. It's funny because I haven't seen either Tron but I feel like at one point I sat down to watch one of them and it begins with like him sitting on a bed talking to a child or something but they've de-aged him and I don't know if that was the... That's this one. That's this one. Why would I... That's this one. The reason I'm so confused about this is why do I know that? Why would I try starting watching a follow-up to a movie that I've never... like an iconic movie that I've never seen before? It sounds like

one of those 3am type decisions. You know what? Let's fire it up. This is a good idea.

Either that or I was thinking specifically like what I keep on calling visual spackle. Like we're talking about movies to have on mute in a bar here. But like no joke, even if I'm here by myself or if I'm like kind of playing darts with Genevieve, we'll have like music playing on the on the turntable. But then we have a TV down here in our rumpus room, too. And so I'll just put on some kind of visual thing on the TV. So if my eyes happen to go there, I'm not just seeing a black mirror. Sorry. um but uh so anyway yeah i could see myself like putting out like thinking like oh tron is gonna be like visually stimulating so i'll put that on and maybe i i don't know uh okay so let me give you another drum roll are we down to number four now i think you have four three two one i think yeah okay here we go number four

i had to get an animated one in there so you might as well go with one of the best and most influential i went with akira oh i've never seen it yeah it's what when you do watch it eventually you're gonna realize how many things have stolen from akira is this 19 like 80s is that akira is it 90s oh that is a great question let me switch my tab over to i read 1988 1988 okay that that

sounds about right and it set the stage and again i think that you and i uh are 10 like 10 years apart maybe slightly more than that or something right yeah um and so there's some cultural like kind of differences there but then also you kind of being more into what i'll just call kind of capital n nerd culture um i feel like there are certain things like one time and i can't remember if it was i feel like it was sailor moon or something like i only know sailor moon is like a meme or something or maybe it wasn't that but like something that i've seen online and i mentioned to like you and another friend one time and you guys are the closer in age like i've never seen i have no i had no cultural reference for it at all and it was just something that like you grew up with the way i grew up with the smurfs anyway good story would that have been the ninja turtles could have been a lot of things well ninja turtles i feel like i have plenty of

plenty of context for oh excuse me i mean like don't don't if you say you're uh mostly a leonardo

who who well let's see donatello is the computer guy right you kind of are a donatello yeah is he the computery guy yeah he's like the tech whiz of the four yeah and then because i mean i think everybody thinks they're like the also one of them is listed as the party animal which is bullshit because they're all party animals right i mean not rafael he's the serious one oh michelangelo is the the fun one yeah okay yeah yeah well anyway i'm glad we're talking about the teenage sorry about that one anyway akira i think i maybe we slid away from that because i have nothing to

add here tell us about akira it is it kind of brought anime to western audiences um and the type of japanese animation that is in that movie has been copied and then pushed forward in the decades since when you watch a care for the first time or even if you just encounter portions of it at a bar you'll be watching it and you'll you'll see the influence of it on so many things afterwards anytime you see somebody do like the slide on a bike oh yeah for example um which everybody has has done i think most recently um was that jordan peele movie nope they do it in nope too uh where they slide on a bike it's on my list do it in the simpsons by the way spoiler

nope is on my list it's a good one that's a good one i've only seen no i've only seen nope once in the theater so it's like some of the things on my list i'm like maybe i should re-watch before committing to it but now we're just talking about nope but like talk about visuals visually stimulating i mean those wind sock i mean this is visually stimulating and i'm not somebody who really loves scary movies i love jordan peele's eye but the scary movies by him scare me too much the one with the people underground too scary us was too scary for me that one's good whereas nope is kind of scary kind of corny actually in some ways so it's perfect for the bar like it's not going to scare the hell out of you it's not like a bunch of jump scares or gore or anything it's just visually beautiful huge sky lines or not sky lines but big open sky I should say

yeah those vistas vistas yeah that man that brings up a great point I think that both of the movies that you've revealed so far have actors who I really enjoy in them and Kiki Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya are both like conversation starter actors too when you see him in something and you're like you know who i like right right and daniel kaluuya is also um has had a super interesting career that if you know anything about it or anything about how english actors are usually found and then put in movies you realize how unlikely of a case he was like why working class background from his family he ends up on skins uh the uk tv show that was kind of controversial at the time and they purposefully cast people who did not come from the same academies where you would find your regular like your sars guards and your cumberbatches or at those academies they they tried to cast people who actually

lived in like blue collar situations your pointy faced boys as Genevieve calls them oh that's good I'm stealing that um I like that a lot um and and you look at the cast that came from skins alone you got Daniel Kaluuya Dev Patel um Nicholas Holt like a bunch of people who went on to be in Game of Thrones uh it's an incredible cast and talking about that and then all the way through the rest of the stuff that daniel kaluuya has done i think with that i mean there's a conversation right there with whoever you're sitting next to at the bar there it is

uh they're also like very easy on the eyes both of those actors too and i don't even mean that i mean i do mean in an objectifying way but even putting the objectifying away like there is something about like just the charisma you know i i'm thinking about like all of the the visual stunningness of the various things on my list as far as like kind of like you know cinematography and big vast open spaces or sci-fi or whatever it is but there's also something when the actors themselves have just some sort of charisma on the screen that also like kind of pops in a similar way yeah steven young is in that one as well oh yeah right right he's really good yeah all right so are you ready for um your next installment i am ready number three i think

all right this one i think that we're we've kind of gotten into the flow of how i've been picking some of these and this one will surprise you but also not surprise you once you look a deeper hellboy 2 and the golden army okay so i've never seen hellboy 1 having said that

i it's worse is it worse actually it's worse so first hellboy comes out in is that the very late 90s or early 2000s do i have the era even close on that i i want to say you know what i could pull

it up but i want to say it's around like oh nine oh okay so much later the original the guillermo

del toro ones yeah oh i'm thinking who's the guy who's very famous for playing hellboy ron perlman but that's a diff is that a different franchise is that an earlier franchise or is that this no this is it's the same one okay and so he's so he's doing that around 2009 that's when the first hellboy comes out and then i start to see him around well i mean but generally speaking i'll bet you you're you're in the in the right ballpark and now this is a sequel how far later

is the sequel is this something that's just been rebooted recently this uh this sequel is 08 so i was definitely oh okay you were right okay the first guillermo del toro directed one must have

come out just a few years prior okay gotcha so so early to mids then 2008 yeah 2008 this one this

This is one of those movies that you watch and you can't believe the time that it did come out because there's a couple full CGI characters, but for the most part, it's practical effects. Everything stands up visually and looks incredible. People are actually in the suits. There's one kind of fish person character called Abe Sapien who, when you ever watch The Shape of the Water that Del Toro won his Oscar for, you'll see some of his earlier ideas for attractive fishmen in hellboy 2 sure yeah um and the effects for him also stand up incredibly well there's also a really cool animated sequence where they fill in some of the backstory for part of the plot it's a visually really interesting movie to look at it's also it also departs from the comics in a pretty big way so in that way like if you know anything about hellboy or have read the comics at all great conversation can be had there as well so visually interesting if you've never seen it before um there are like there are a couple things that aren't great about it but can still be talked about like jeffrey tambor is in it but his character sucks and you're meant to laugh at him the entire time because he sucks i see so in that way it's whatever still don't love him as a person yeah yeah that's boy what a bummer there

to find out what an asshole he is yeah yeah too bad because he's been yeah he's been a lot of stuff i like all right uh we're getting very close here and i'm getting now i'm getting excited i i think we're gonna have to i i do want to share my list with you but i think we're gonna maybe race through it but first we're gonna get to number two for you ready

mortal combat from 1995 okay tell me about it it perfectly captures the level of like before these companies knew which intellectual properties they wanted to mine they knew that they wanted to try to capture like well people people are really into video games like can we turn it into a movie kind of thing and you can almost feel the level of like this was all figured out in a meeting and then they wrote the script later kind of movie. And you can get that even by not even hearing any of the words on the screen. which is what, it's kind of the magic of this movie. It's so good. Like, the fight scenes are surprisingly good, given what looks like a shoestring budget in parts of it. There aren't that many actors in it that you'll recognize, but that's also kind of cool, just given the era where you're like, dang, why wasn't the guy who played Liu Kang, who was the lead in this, a bigger deal? It was just a really saturated time for martial arts forward action movie stars at the time, and there wasn't enough space for them.

But on the very early edge of turning video games into, like, quasi-serious movies.

Yeah, I think this is around the time that the, um, that cursed Mario Brothers movie came out. Do you remember that one from the 90s as well?

Yeah.

They turned Yoshi into an actual dinosaur, and then, like, the Koopa Troopas are, like, these huge turtle guys with tiny little heads. Who's the face? Who played, was it Luigi? oh luigi is john leguizamo yeah like was on okay so we are the same one yeah who framed roger

rabbit who's that guy uh also that's another great bar it's on my list so far you've mentioned three that are on my list that's good roger rabbit is definitely on my list yeah yeah that's a great one are you talking about the grumpy guy who plays the um who plays the dick in uh yeah roger rabbit yeah yeah he um he's really excited to see that he was uh i just can't think of his name he He's a very celebrated actor. Get your mind out of the gutter. Okay, yeah, yeah. I do, because wasn't that the movie where it was, like, people realized that, oh, it turns out that the Mario Brothers' last name is Mario? Or wait, because you have Mario Brothers. The name is Mario Mario? Right, so it's Luigi Mario and Mario Mario because they're the Mario Brothers? All right. Any sense. Is Mario Brothers on your list?

It is not, but man, that would have been great. I'm going to add it to the long list right after this. That's a really good thing.

After this, we're going to hook up on Letterboxd, and we're going to be friends. Okay, I'm going to give you a drum roll for, I believe. Is this your number one? Is this your final one, or is this your number two?

You know, I did not do the order very well. This one's kind of a curveball. It doesn't match the other ones. Okay.

But you only have one more on the list?

This is it? I think so, yeah.

Overboard. that I'm glad this is on your list because we have to talk about this we are an overboard family Genevieve and I how did I not know that Genevieve is obsessed with that movie she loves it it's such a comfort movie Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell and I mean just because they're still a real couple in real life right IRL couple so there's so much charisma there Genevieve's the one who kind of brought that movie to the relationship, it's problematic in some ways in the fact that it's kind of, in a certain way, celebrates human slavery. You've really got to get into the plot.

What you don't understand is...

Inventured servitude, at the very least. I'm not a slaveholder, but... The taking advantage of a woman who doesn't have her memory anymore. Having said all that, we love that movie, but it doesn't seem like an on-mute, visually stimulating movie.

It mostly is because of the physicality of those two star actors' performances. There are scenes where Kurt Russell is just jacked to hell in this movie, and he's wearing barely a shirt in some of these scenes where you're like, you know what? You used to be able to just make rom-coms where Kurt Russell's just beefcake-ing around for 90 minutes.

That is all you need. That is literally all you need. See, there you go. And now he's back in. He's back in. You know what's interesting? And I was going to ask you this about midway through your list because one thing I was sort of thinking about last night, not a huge concern and not to paint me as too much of a prude. But like if we're talking about these movies, one thing I didn't want, and I think everything on your list and mine avoids this, one thing you don't want is like a long, like sort of prolonged intimate sex scene in the middle of one of these movies when you're just sort of chilling at the bar. Cause then you're just kind of like, well, if I stare at this too long, I look weird. You know what I mean? You can stare at a car chase for 15 minutes. You're fine. But like, if you're just like locked in for five minutes on some sort of like, you know,

let's talk about why violence is more acceptable than our society.

Exactly. You gotta figure out like, at what point do I need to avert my eyes before I start to look like the perv here?

The only movie on my list that I knew there would be like some conspicuous nudity is Blade Runner 2049 where Ana de Armas plays basically a sex robot hologram person and there's some I want to say there's some nudity there I'm pretty sure. There's nudity but because I was picturing the scenes where like there's huge nude hologram sort of like projected up into the sky almost in this futuristic city. And I sort of feel like artsy sort of nudity like that I don't think is a deal killer. It's more like if there's like a, you know, like again, like a real, like a really long, like intimate scene between a couple of people could just be like, oh, maybe it makes things a little bit awkward at the bar. And maybe he has, he's there's like a little bit of romance between him and his, in his his robot girl um but i don't think too much i don't think i don't think i agree i mean

it's on both of our lists because i think we agree on that one of the movies that i think was on my long list at one point but i took off because of like an awkward sex scene is top gun oh yeah you

know i um watched top gun like crazy as a young kid but the version i watched was taped off of NBC I believe it was its network premiere and we taped it off of television and that was the one so I still don't think I've seen the uncut sex scene but I will say the even the TV version as a kid I could tell things were getting spicy a lot of white satin a lot of motors a lot of a lot of I'm gonna take a shower and a lot of white satin that's like I don't know exactly what's going on here but I think I I think I like it why is everybody so sweaty after right exactly um all right so well that's a good list so do you have anything else to say though about your number one pick as far as it being a because that is a curveball i feel like as far as a i mean it's a romantic comedy from the 80s when i think about like a lot of the the shots in the movie a lot of them are just sort of his his really cruddy little like shack that he lives in with too many bratty kids you know so it's not like eye candy like a lot of the stuff i put up

there i i mean maybe the eye candy portion of it is a little film nerdy for me where i feel like so many things are you know fixed in post um shot to be filled with effects later to the point that like some of these marvel tv shows like have cgi oh yeah somebody putting their shoes on for example like really mundane stuff so sometimes the visual striking stuff to me is seeing man they really just used to shoot like yeah this guy's shack of a house was one of the main settings of this movie they weren't showing you like a big fancy thing there's no crazy rich asians here it's this is a

handyman you know and my favorite scenes as far as i guess visuals are concerned in that movie well the boat obviously at the beginning the yacht is beautiful but also the bowling alley that he works at and hangs out at all the time remember there's like some i don't know the last time you've seen this but there's like a sort of a i believe a hole cut in a wall that separates like the bowling alley from the bowling alley bar and i think sometimes like there's a lot of conversations that happen like with him sticking half of his torso through that hole does any of this ring a

bell to you at all maybe it's been a while i don't know how i don't remember see now i'm gonna have to re-watch this soon it's a good idea walk the walk because i don't remember that at all funny enough though i was at a bowling alley recently and they had a like a one-way mirror window at the urinals where i could see what was going on at the bar of the bowling oh that's interesting this feels familiar in some way and maybe it was because of overboard so while you're peeing you

can look at people who can't see you peeing do i have that right yeah oh that's a weird that must be a weird sensation this wasn't in the bathroom this was like between this like sort of like the You know how there will always be, like, the bar, which is called, like, the 11th frame or, like, whatever they always call it? And then I feel like – I don't know if it was between the bar and the kitchen or between the bar and the alley, but I sort of – I'll have to look it up later. I feel like there's a lot of –

Oh, kind of like a food runner's window? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Like a food runner's window that he's sort of leaning through quite a bit. So, anyway, really good for me to really drill down on that. uh uh so now i want to share with you we've been going on uh quite some time i was going to try to keep today's show to about 40 minutes we are now well into hour number two um but i can't not share my list with you so i will try to run through these quickly and again we've already discussed three of them because um they were they were brought up in our conversation i i don't know if you saw me tinkering i started rearranging these things again i have as we were going yes I thought you were doing legitimate show business. Well, it is show business. And so here's the deal, though. I asked you to get your list down to 10. This is my problem. I'm still up to 11. And we need to get rid of one of them. And it's going to kill me to get rid of this one. I'm going to cut this one, but I want to call it an also ran because this was on your list as well. and it's literally one of my favorite movies Jackie Brown I think I gotta cut it off of my top 10 because

there's some other things jackie brown will have some scenes in there that maybe would maybe drag a little bit here and there without the dialogue or or might be actually upsetting at the bar i think there's some like nudity and guns or something like that might it is a tarantino movie but there is so much to love visually about this movie i mean starting and ending with the opening credit sequence which is one of my favorites of all time as you see Jackie Brown walking through LAX against that just iconic sidewalks and everything it's incredible damn it so Jackie Brown is not on my list but I needed to give it a shout out this one is going to get me fired by you and Luke and everybody involved but I gotta put it on my list 1991's Toys with Robin Williams and LL Cool J are you taking my duplication investigation seriously are you disrespecting my duplication investigation and did i mention a youngish joan cusack that movie is so weird but so cartoonish and visually stimulating have you

ever seen it i've only seen parts of it funny enough like maybe not at a bar but i feel like on tv somewhere where i'm like what what is what is this probably even better on mute so that you

don't have to get swept up into any of the plot but it's just like it's so weird it's like i can't remember exactly the details but robin williams i believe is he's probably i'm probably getting this wrong he's probably the heir to like some sort of like toy making you know uh uh kingpin not kingpin what's what i'm looking for you know somebody who set up like magnate is exactly the word i'm looking for thank you um and and so i think he inherits the toy making factory but it's like just bizarre like everything that takes place in the toy factory is like it's like you're inside a toy itself like they drive these little golf carts around to get from place to place but all the hallways because it's more fun this way are made of like little tiny hills so all the golf carts go up and down like they're going over waves it's just absolutely ridiculous there are scenes where they're driving these carts i think through like you can't tell if they're like wide open fields or if they're actually in a warehouse somewhere it's like very visually stimulating i'm telling you it's a great thing to have on at the bar and again you will have some people saying the fuck but like that's I think that's worth it um some of these are going to be maybe a little pretentious and a little bit dusty but I put the graduate on my list oh you know I just like that was when I first got a dvd player I ran out and I got the graduate and another one that is on my list um did I keep it on my list yes I'll skip ahead a little bit here uh Badlands Terrence

Malick's Badlands I don't know if you've seen that one Texas's own Terrence Malick that's right

that's your second Texas reference by the way you get one more use it or lose it by the way they don't roll over to your next appearance um I feel like you got to have a Terrence Malick on there if you're talking about eye candy um you know the content is you know it's a it's a very rough kind a bonnie and clyde story but told through the lens of a poetic soul it's charlie sheen and no no i'm sorry it's martin a very very young martin sheen and sissy spacek right and um you know they fall in love and go on the road and i think go on a murder spree and then they have to like hide out in the woods and again it's just like it's poetic it's beautiful and it's also super dark material so that's so that's badlands uh but the graduate i think most people are familiar with dustin Hoffman and The Graduate um but just like I I just love the look of both of those movies on the

screen completely agree The Graduate has so many iconic scenes and iconic frames yeah yep exactly

uh I felt like and you know I know that you had some of these on your um broader list now I was kind of surprised that none of them made it over to your shorter list but I felt like if we're talking eye candy I'd have to bring some Wes Anderson into this I think when we were interested

to see which one because that was a late cut for me I wanted to include one as well

I don't think you're going to like mine I don't even know if I would fully I don't know if I can fully defend the one I picked I'll tell you what it was in a second I know on your broader list you had Zissou right Steve Zissou which the Life Aquatic which I like the looks of that movie but honestly I feel like it sort of drags and I feel like it's a little bit over you know there's so that's what makes it a great bar movie like that's one that I think it's like is best as just like beautiful images um but i did not pick that one and i did not pick what i think is my favorite wess anderson although it's up there i'm going old school bottle rocket i i know it's not the eye candy-ish it's not the most eye candy of his twee movies but like

Like it's very early on. He hasn't fully established himself as what he's what he will eventually become as a director, which is this sort of like I don't know what you call that sort of like kind of almost like a diorama. Yeah, the diorama boxy thing that he does. I love that, but it's fun to see Bottle Rocket before he totally honed that. But you just see little bits of it. And I think of it as a very bright movie and a very like kind of color splashed movie.

Completely agreed. The Wes Anderson movie that did make the cut for me was The French Dispatch. Ah, yes. Which I think it's all vignettes that are like kind of connected. I ended up cutting it for like the same nudity reasons that I cut some other stuff. But that is one of my favorite movies just to look at. Like it's so precisely.

Yes. Yeah. That's beautiful. It was you that I got into a conversation about that movie recently, right? Like about whether or not it was a meta statement about his lack of emotion that he puts in movies that he kind of addresses it in that movie um exactly and if people would like to hear more and asteroid city even more so oh which i still haven't seen yet but i'll bet you that would be good on the bar tv oh yeah yeah it would yeah uh all right now this next one is almost laughable that i would put it on my list because um i only saw it once i don't remember much about it and this isn't a world that i spend a lot of time in but i felt like we need a star war on the tv Like, I am not an action adventure person, except I feel like Star Wars always does it really well. As somebody who's not deep into nerd culture and not into action movies, I always feel like the action that I see in Star Wars movies, at least like the first handful of them or whatever, the action is always very deliberate. It pushes the plot forward, and it's very beautiful. You know, it really is like a dance. I only saw Rogue One once. I could have picked almost any of these. Did you go with Rogue One? But I'm going with Rogue One, yeah, because I feel like I just remember, like, don't they have to get, like, an eight-track up to the top of a tower or something, and it's about physical media? And I'm just kind of like, I love the physical media of all this. They're MacGuffin-ing so hard. Yes, yes, yes, and it doesn't make sense. I read one of the most fascinating pieces that I've tried to look up since, and it's been so long now. Somebody wrote this fascinating piece talking about the physical media in the Star Wars universe and how it doesn't really make sense. if you look at the order of the movies in which they're supposed to take place in that world's timeline, the technology actually gets worse as time goes on. Because early on, you have holograms. But then later on, you're fighting over like an eight track. Yeah, exactly. But I loved it. Didn't you have to actually climb to the top of a tower to plug an eight track into a slot like

that really speaks to me? Yeah, to a satellite that like she had to physically point like through a hole in the atmosphere it was yeah like i said they were mcguffing hard yeah they're like i don't

know how to wrap this up but here we go so as somebody who remember who knows that world way more and has seen all the movies um what do you think of that pick as far as rogue one which one

would you pick i think that there are four legitimate star wars picks and i'm pretty sure all four are on my long list as well you got the original a new hope which anytime that's on people are going to be like i love this movie um rogue one was also on my list i think it's the best of the modern like post prequel of the movies and then you got um the phantom menace episode one that's the one with pod racing in it i think that's also a great choice um and then the fourth one of the new ones i would say the last jedi which has some just really really great visuals there's a throne room fight scene in that one that is basically an all red room and they've gotten the lightsabers to yes yes i remember like they're actually lit in in the shot so what they're able to do with like light and shadow and color in that scene is absolutely ridiculous and it's one of the best looking star wars movies that johnson that's ryan johnson who now i'm starting

to wonder should i have put um his very first movie which i'll always think of him first as doing his brick is one of my favorite movies i was like could that be on the tv may that would be an easy one to maybe like knock off the top 10 but i would put it on my broader list brick

oh absolutely that's one that if i walked into a bar and they were playing brick i'm like i'm

gonna be here for a while here's the thing about me like brick i would consider to be like a like kind of a pretty big twist on neo-noir but it is a noir you know what i mean it's the whole thing And, like, that is definitely my favorite genre, like neo-noir. In fact, that leads right into my next one, Chinatown. Chinatown will be on my list. Like, I know, like, problematic director, obviously. But, I mean, I love that era of filmmaking. I love that style of filmmaking. It's very eye candy-ish. But it's also in the great noir tradition. super long and super complicated. And every time you watch, you're like, oh, that's right. It's about water. It's about, you know, I already mentioned that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is on my list too. That's another neo-noir. Like that is about public transportation and like trying to build a highway. It's about like highways. Yeah, exactly. Will highways destroy the public transportation in San Francisco? And like, that's the thing about really good noir is it's about sort of the mondacity of civic life and then how crime will sort of corrupt that. And so I think the best noir is getting some really kind of dry territory and then kind of just get weird. And I think Toontown does that really well. And I feel like Chinatown does that really well. I would also put in that category, this is something that I should do now that I am an official letterboxd person. I want to put together a list of my favorite neo-noir films because I feel like L.A. Confidential needs to be on that list.

Speaking of light and shadow. Yes, yes.

Using that trope of light and shadow.

Beautifully shot.

Yeah. So anyway, yeah, let's work on that. Can we collab on lists on Letterboxd if we become friends?

You know, I think so.

Okay, we'll figure that out.

I'll find a way for it to work.

Okay. So let's see here. So, yeah, I have Chinatown and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Believe it or not, like, I don't know if other people group those two movies together as much as I would. Oh, Blade Runners are other. Those are neo-noirs. Blade Runner 2049. So I've kind of got three noirs on there. This next one. Well, you know that I have Nope. I actually have that one as my number one. Nope. But Jordan Peele.

One more question on Nope. Is it too new? I don't think so. i mean how so you think enough people saw it that like if you were to walk in and you saw the second half of nope and you never saw that movie before would you be like dang i meant to watch this

i mean yeah oh oh i see for spoilers i thought you meant like for just people being like i don't know what's going on i'm like oh i thought that's the whole point i see what you mean it could ruin the experience when did nope come out i mean it's been like four years right no yeah maybe it has been like three or four years uh nope 2022 so it's only two years old um i'm not worried about that you know that there's no subtitles on if you don't like it go play some shuffleboard

uh but i wanted to see it i've seen it by now yeah i'm putting nope number one on the list

but i did have to skip one here because i was all over the place and i might i feel like this one might surprise you a little bit maybe not as much as robin williams toys but that's the most i am going with the 1992 batman movie batman returns the one with um catwoman and the penguin the thing is like so my favorite movie growing up was just always batman what we now call batman 89 but growing up we just called it batman and that was the first movie that i saw that was really part of a cultural phenomenon at the time i didn't know anything about batman i think you know this story that I got excited in the theater watching the movie when I when I thought I figured out that Batman and Bruce Wayne were the same person we were like literally turned to my dad and said that and I don't know if he thought I was joking or not or if he just wondered if he ended up with the wrong kid but anyway um but I got swept up into the whole Batman thing and then after seeing that first movie I started collecting some comic books or whatever so I love the original Batman. I'm not arguing that Batman Returns is better than that, but it does have great... How well do you remember 92's Batman Returns?

I don't remember it great. I remember it for the visual style and the character designs, which I think are why it works so well as a movie on mute. The costumes are just incredible. Danny DeVito is the penguin. Michelle Pfeiffer is Catwoman. Iconic takes on both of those characters honestly hard to get away from each of those it's taken like a couple decades to

to not treat them in that way i think also and i'm and as i pick to this one i'm wondering if i am maybe i'm assuming that this is a bigger part of the movie than it is but there are these little flashes of eye candy in there um that i like one very small thing is like the um the apartment that michelle pfeiffer's cat woman lives in or like whatever she whatever her name is before she becomes Catwoman and then like as she becomes Catwoman and like she has like this neon for some dumb reason she has like a neon sign in her window that says hello there but after she becomes Catwoman two of the letters break and it says hell here and I saw it was a very iconic like it's a cheesy joke it is a visual bit and then do you remember that I think when we're first I think when we're introduced to Danny DeVito So...

penguin we see just this giant yellow rubber ducky floating through the sewer and i'm just like oh shit like that alone like i've been to a couple huskies like university of washington huskies football games the only thing i remember about them is how much i like it when they drive the little football cart the football helmet cart around the field like if you like that you will love the rubber ducky mobile you're gonna love that manager of danny devito's uh penguin there

so you i don't know if you did this on purpose or maybe you intuited my my same sequel um ideology that i had on my list but you went with the sequel over the original yeah for i think some interesting reasons and also a bit of that debate like you kind of walked into it anyway like i don't know if this one's better necessarily or even that i think about it more but visually it is the one that is more interesting and i think leads to more interesting conversations as well

yeah and the thing is like i love the first movie i mean i i used to come home i i got like whatever year that came out on vhs i would come home and i would just put it in like putting in like a like a cassette tape to listen to i would just watch batman i would just pick up wherever i left off and i would just watch it until i had to do something i just constantly watching it as a kid i had i think there was a time where i had every line of dialogue memorized not because i was trying to but just because i would just like watched it so much and so because of that it holds a special place in my heart but i kind of don't need to see it again you know what i mean if i see it in the corner television i'm probably going to ignore it a little bit more because i know it so well whereas i'll forget things about batman returns and i feel the same way the the reason i didn't pick the first star wars movie a new hope is because i feel like i've just seen it so much like it's beautiful there's no reason other than saturation that i didn't pick that one over rogue one but uh yeah i think you got something there well this was this was a lot of fun nick can i

ask you a question that you're not prepped for at all so yes a couple of the movies that we picked have either directors or kind of a reference to some other seasonal movie as well if you were to throw in like one halloween movie or one christmas movie around that time of year which uh what would you go for and i can buy you a little time yeah why don't you go first my christmas one is the santa claus with an e at the end wait is that that's not tim allen tim allen really yeah tim for a lot of the same reason that you like toys like when they get to the north pole and you're submerged like in this weird world where all of the actors are children except for tim allen and david krumholz like and also david krumholz is in it as like a teenage i don't know who that is bureaucrat who's oh man he's definitely a that guy for you then because when you look him up you're gonna be like i've seen him in a lot of things okay but um yeah the santa claus great sets incredible set designs not a story that you even need to hear any of the words to get there's a lot of visual bits like there's one where he keeps on turning into santa claus and he keeps on shaving off his beard to try to not look like santa claus but it keeps on coming back that's a little sequence that you need zero dialogue to understand my halloween pick beetlejuice oh that's

great yeah what do you think about the new beetlejuice coming out i mean i'll see it yeah i

know i it's been kind of the year of legacy sequels that we may or may not have needed yeah i feel i'll go see it i have zero hope that it's gonna be good i'm also like not the biggest tim burton person anyway even though i do like a number of his his movies the uh the legacy sequel

that i'm really excited for gladiator 2 oh my god i saw now i you i don't know if you'll be surprised to hear this or not but um i've never seen the first gladiator i wasn't somebody who was super into gladiator yeah that probably is more action than you want yeah and a lot of fighty action too which isn't something that i'm super into i mean i wasn't like avoiding it i just you know i just never saw it um but uh but are your hopes high for the sequel my hopes are high my

hopes are high for that one denzel washington and um oh man i just blanked on his name but he's like one of the the hottest like young actor he's the next big thing type people i wish i could remember his name he's playing the the gladiator in this one oh also pedro pascal is oh that's

right i saw that pedro pascal is in it because i saw a trailer for it i i was very lost watching the trailer for it um having not seen the first one yeah denzel's in it he just sounds like he's from new york it's great the beetlejuice i i didn't know they were making another beetlejuice i think I'm trying to remember what movie Veeves and I saw We saw some huge blockbuster recently and I saw a trailer for both the new Beetlejuice and the new Gladiator and I didn't know that either one of them were coming out with sequels and I was a little bit, I mean, I was glad to see that Tim Burton is still at the helm for the new Beetlejuice but I also didn't realize that until the end of the trailer and I was watching and I'm like, I don't know if Tim Burton would put up with this and then at the end I was like, oh, it was actually Tim Burton who did all of that because the trailer was not super great. It just was sort of like if you liked these guys the first time you're if you liked the waiting room with all of the weird it's back

and it's gonna be like we're putting that visual gag on the poster so you know really see yeah

like a movie that is just like that that has to be propped up by the nostalgia and like oh this is good if you saw the first one as opposed to if you're a young person and you're just seeing this for the first time like it didn't didn't seem like there's any exactly as you put it it didn't

seemed like there was a need for it no not at all but tim burton's been up to kind of like not very inspiring stuff lately anyway like jenna ortega who stars in beetlejuice beetlejuice was also in netflix's wednesday oh yeah that's right like she's really good that one and directed the first episode of that one i think and like cool but like did we need it kind of thing yeah the

whole wednesday thing in general i thought that was pretty well celebrated you were less into that

i mean it's it's kind of just another netflix show in my opinion like i i am interested to see what jenna ortega can do as she gets deeper into her career because i do want her to be an interesting performer but the show itself is like netflix has a netflix does this thing where they'll adopt a property and just put everybody in a high school or like a school for magic children or something and they've done this with like several different properties um and they're just they're just seeing which one will stick because the algorithm has clearly told them like make a magical school for youngsters people want to see that and that's what they

turn the adam family into for this one i see i see well the reason if i seem slightly distracted is because i'm sort of clicking through christmas films i um i feel like there was something the reason i'm especially aggravated right now is because i feel like there was a film that was very holiday-ish that i actually cut from my list i was thinking the holdovers like something like that like a cozy just sort of a cozy vibe sort of i don't think the holdovers ever made even anywhere close to my list but i thought i had something like that that i cut because it was so christmassy i will mention i'm not trying to loophole this here and i'm not trying to do the whole diehard was a christmas movie thing like okay um but honestly and i don't know if this is why you brought it up but the batman returns is a kind of a christmas era movie i don't know if you know that or if you remember that but it's like giant christmas tree and um i almost said it's not new york it's gotham city um so that's kind of that's not dirty rock it's kind of got that uh it's kind of got that holiday vibe i'm not gonna count that i'm not gonna count the holdovers listen i grew up watching a christmas story i looked very much like ralphie in a christmas story that is another one that i've probably seen it too many times but that was actually on in the background somewhere i was this holiday season and that is still one where it's like oh this scene he gets his tongue stuck on the pole or like triple dog there yes or when santa pushes him down this would like literally just kicks him down the slide and uh yeah there are scenes where you could say i've seen it too many times but then as you're watching it um and You get sucked in anyway. You get sucked in. I'm probably going to go with that one, and I'm looking here. I guess Gremlins is a Christmas movie. I mean, I say this about every movie, and I'm sorry if I'm being like – but I'm thinking A Christmas Story and Gremlins both have sort of Asian racism in them to different degrees. I don't know if you remember that. A Christmas Story, like they go to an Asian restaurant when their meal is ruined, and it is rough, the depiction they're in. And of course, the Gremlins, where you have the sort of mystical old man. I don't even remember that much about it. But the way the origin of the Gremlin thing is, I think, pretty rough. But like kind of putting that aside, would you count Gremlins as a Christmas movie or is that more of a loophole or like your diehard Christmas movie?

I haven't watched Gremlins recently enough to weigh in too strongly on that one. I also do think it's interesting how easily you're willing to push your racism aside for your picks. but you move on I think gremlins counts I think that that's a that's an interesting enough one that you're like oh yeah you know what I guess this is a Christmas movie kind of thing if like

I feel like if you come on if you walk into this this this fantasy bar that we've set up and it's the middle of July and gremlins is on it feels strange if you come in late November to late December and Thank you.

gremlins is on it feels right for the time there's the case right there yeah it feels you're 100% correct diehard less so i feel like batman returns less so but like gremlins feels like it should be i'm even looking at the movie poster now he's popping out of a christmas present little um what was the little guy's name i can't remember the main uh gizmo gizmo yeah exactly so um i don't know i'll go with i'll go with one of those as christmas and then for halloween it's really tough for me i spent all of all of my capital going through um christmas uh lists here so i didn't look up the halloween one it's rough for me because i'm not a big fan oh i know probably it's funny because i've never actually seen this movie with the sound on i've only experienced it in a bar at uh our local eagles club with the sound down our friends were all like playing bingo or something and then i went into the bar to get a drink and then i got sucked into uh watching it and it is already battle tested it's already yes exactly and I almost came home to actually watch it and I didn't I'm really stalling here because I can't think of the name of it but it's become I think sort of an iconic movie for a certain generation and it has uh Bette Midler and two other great actors playing witches hocus pocus hocus pocus how about that

for my halloween pick yeah sarah jessica parker's one of the witches yeah um i can't remember the

third one but yeah that's a great pick i think that is actually one thing that is maybe even because i i've had this experience a couple of times often at our eagles club where they'll have something on in the background and then i get sucked into it and then i want to come home and watch it from the beginning and hocus pocus was one of those i never kind of did it but i remember thinking like i gotta watch this movie and that's sort of a uh it's a bit of a measurement

for what we're doing here right yeah 100 i think that one's such a good pick it's it's somehow the only one that we've even encountered in the exact scenario that we're trying to capture yeah exactly i still i still haven't have you seen it i have seen hocus pocus yeah it's a it's a great pick for a bar movie because there's enough going on and enough actors that you're like i know that person what are they doing in this that um especially like the young sarah jessica parker in that because that's pre sex in the city yeah yeah like i don't know i don't even know what she was up to career-wise back then but she was in that movie yes good pick i'm glad that i i'm glad

that that one slipped into my head here at the end uh nick literally i could do this forever i was seriously trying to keep the shows short this week we are this is the wrong person and we didn't even you're welcome listeners and we didn't even get into your politics oh man oh yeah i sent you a whole long text about that you said what if we talked about movies you just said i want government so small i can drown in the bathtub and i was like i'm not getting into that with you um but uh no this has been tons of fun you and i should do this more often maybe even maybe we should just you know there's an argument to be made that we didn't need to record this this could have just been you and me sitting at teddy's our personal exactly but if the listeners had any fun along with this uh send in uh your lists as well you can email me andrew at tbtl.net if you'd like to weigh in on your top 10 movies to watch on mute in a bar and i'll pass them along to nick as well nick thank you again do you have anything that you want to point people's attention to before i

get you out of here uh i guess follow me on letterboxd i'm slow nick on there slow nick yeah it's a riff on my uh my first radio nickname when i was on uh 710 espn seattle they called me nick the quick so on some social media i go by slow nick you you have fully rejected your radio

man i don't know if it was me or ron and don but my god when you left radio you really just the reason isn't in the room with us okay sounds good all right well uh and also i guess i am on there too i think i signed up as radio free walsh on letterboxd so you can find us both there now all right thank you everybody nick do you remember how to get out of here can you help me with the closing you say good luck to all after i say everybody have a great tuesday we'll talk to you wednesday and remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all perfect

power out

Thank you.